On opening night for the United Kingdom's second television channel on 22 September 1955, the BBC, the established service, sent a 25-year-old newlywed farmer's wife, Grace Archer, into burning stables to rescue a trapped and frantic horse. She paid for her selflessness and gallantry with her life but her sacrifice ensured that the 20 million people listening to the Ambridge conflagration on the Light Programme were not watching Independent Television's launch. Fifty-eight years later, Sky Sports, on the day of BT Sport's debut evening of programmes, sent its excitable, thundering news anchor Jim White off on a helicopter odyssey of eight football grounds as part of an at times enjoyable, interminable and ultimately preposterous spoiling strategy.

Sky Sports News gave itself an 11-hour start on the broadcaster's new rival with White opening proceedings at 7am in radiant sunshine on a balcony at company HQ in west London, the presenter seemingly more enthusiastic than ever. The combination of ozone and aviation fuel perhaps gave his exuberance a new peak when he set out his quest on behalf of "this wonderful, wonderful channel". Over 15 hours until 10pm the goal was for the programme to groundhop all 92 Premier and Football League clubs and his personal objective to make pilgrimages to Gillingham, Arsenal, Watford, Swansea, Cardiff, Wigan, Liverpool and Manchester United was revealed with such reverence that one almost expected his instructions to self-destruct, Mission Impossible-style.

While he set off in the "92 Livecopter" his co-presenters remained wedded to their desks, dropping in on White's lieutenants doing the rounds of clubs on their patches in the manner of a host Eurovision country corralling the votes. We began on the roof of Goodison Park where we met the first of the morning's groundsmen. If its intention was to show the variety of trades required by clubs and the value they provide to employment, Sky succeeded as we were introduced during these goodwill visits to Huddersfield Town's chef, Rochdale's kit man, Notts County's falconer whose charge keeps the Meadow Lane pigeons at bay, Bournemouth's club ambassador, Colchester United's sports scientist and Fulham's Diddy David Hamilton.

A more traditional cast of managers, chairmen, chief executives and players represented most clubs but the chief delight of the channel and its reporters were the "access all areas" privileges they were able to share with the viewers. If at times this seemed to involve frequent strolls down vibrantly painted brick corridors, thrumming commercial-scale drying machines and displays of formation lawn-mowing there was the occasional scoop, none bigger than Doncaster Rovers' signing of One Direction's Louis Tomlinson on non-contract terms. The club announced that he would be training with the first-team squad and wear the No28 shirt but not that the Keepmoat season ticket-holder would be leaving the band or have any genuine chance of making the grade. Still, as a gimmick to raise funds and the profile of the work he does for a local hospice it was the most worthy in a day of such numerous stunts that occasionally one got the impression the channel intended you to wonder whether it was parodying itself.

Jake Humphrey inaugurated BT Sport with his feet on the ground and from the centre of the Olympic Stadium and it was intriguing that it chose to introduce the faces of its coverage while playing Elgar's elegiac Nimrod, as if emphasising custom, seriousness and restraint. There was something rather broadsheet about its roster – Clare Balding, Tom Watt and Danny Baker – suggesting effort had been invested in gauging the kind of reputations of most appeal to the audience it covets.

Humphrey and his rugby presenter colleague Craig Doyle walked about the set, showing off the main new toy, a glass pitch on the studio floor which can spool through the sports from football and rugby to tennis and basketball for the experts to stand on and act out their analysis. Who knows whether the perky crowd gathered standing around the staff on the Top Gear principle was for the party only or will become a regular sight.

Steve McManaman, David James and Michael Owen were, like the hosts, dressed down – part solicitor in Café Rouge for Sunday brunch, part Boden model. Both channels exuded confidence, Sky Sports News as market leader, hamming up its schtick for all its worth to stress its sense of ownership of the game and almost so brash it ate itself in the process, BT Sport trying to assert its differences and relative sophistication. On another day of compelling Ashes cricket it was difficult for one channel to upstage the other entirely and fortunately no cast member of the Archers was killed in the making of either spectacle.